Mother’s Day & Misc.

by jkatejohnston

9 May 2015

Dear Max,

Enzo thinks today is Mother’s Day. (It’s tomorrow.) This morning when he woke up, instead of calling me to carry him from his bed to the couch, he jumped down from the top bunk with a loud thump and came into the kitchen. He’d told Teresa that he was going to make us coffee, so she’d laid out all the things for the Keurig coffee maker. I dispatched myself back to bed and waited, listening: drawers opening and closing, cupboards slamming shut, the coffee maker coming on, sounds of packaging being torn open, a loud thump probably because he has to stand on the counter to reach most of the dishes, and then he jumps down.

And in a few minutes a boy appears, bearing coffee and a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, the most beautiful sight you ever saw.

By the time Teresa got back from walking Colin, Enzo was pretty much over Mother’s Day. He put the pod for Teresa’s decaf into the Keurig, closed the top, pressed the button and walked away as the stream of coffee filled her cup, saying over his shoulder, “The rest is your problem.”

Enzo gave Teresa See’s candy. I got the craft he made at school, a booklet of thick paper with lavender sewed on the cover: coupons for coffee and five-minute foot rubs. I asked if one coupon covered both feet. “Yeah. Two and a half minutes each.”

*

He was in the shower and the rod and curtain fell down: “Well, there goes my dignity. What’s left of it.”

*

“I actually had a dream—we had all these fancy meats on a cruise. Is it possible to eat in a dream?”

“Sure.”

“But how do you even swallow?”

*

“Mom, what’s seven times eight?”

“Fifty-six, I think.”

“Why does it always have to be fifty-six?”

*

“Reading to Enzo, I stopped to explain the words copse and raison d’etre. “Mom, if you stop and explain every little thing, we’re never going to get to the story.” Copse makes me think of Thomas Hardy, and that makes me think of Al Stephens, so I like that word. It’s funny how a word can carry a whole cloud of private associations. It’s a wonder we can understand each other at all.

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One Comment to “Mother’s Day & Misc.”

This was originally posted with wrong math: seven times eight equals fifty-four. (I’ve attempted to correct that.) Now I’m dying to get back my original note to see if I told him wrong at the time or not. I’m away from home so I had to write from memory instead of from my notes.